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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24019387">After Forever</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/L3245/pseuds/L3245'>L3245</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Forever [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Miraculous Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Amnesia, Angst, Depression, F/M, Guardian!Adrien, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Identity Reveal, Marinette Loses Her Memories, Past Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Romance, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:21:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,150</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24019387</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/L3245/pseuds/L3245</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s Marinette. Just a normal girl, with a normal life. Who else would she be?</p><p>-or-</p><p>The time after Ladybug makes Chat Noir the Guardian, told in separate attempts at normalcy.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Forever [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684930</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>After Forever</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Writing so much happy makes me want to be sad. Here is the hellish product of 2am angst. Good luck in getting through all this angsty mess, lol...</p><p>If you haven't read the first two parts of the series, you might be a little confused, but you should be fine. The basic plot is that Marinette gives up being the Guardian because both Nathalie and Adrien discovered her identity and she also did Something Bad.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the daytime, she’s Marinette. Just a normal girl, with a normal life.</p><p>But there’s something about her that no one knows ye—</p><p>-x-</p><p>Marinette Dupain-Cheng wakes up in her bed, some worried voices nearby but sounding too fuzzy to be recognized. Her body feels like she had been flung off the top of the Eiffel Tower and landed in a bed of thorns. There’s the familiar combination of a pounding dizziness in her head, ache in her eyes, and tightness in her throat. She attempts to push herself up to a sitting position, noticing her wrapped hand too late. Her hastily bandaged palm explodes in pain, the skin stretching and tearing.</p><p>She lets out an instinctive whimper of pain, immediately quieting the voices.</p><p>“Marinette! Oh, thank god,” her mother breathes. Sabine’s normally soothing tones are harsh now, raspy, as if she had been crying.  Gentle arms come around Marinette’s dainty frame. A hand reaches behind her to stroke her hair. They rock back and forth slowly and to the racking of her mother’s body. “Marinette, we were so worried. When we saw you on the floor again with… with… oh.”</p><p>The teenage girl looks at her mom hugging her, at her dad on the floor of her bedroom looking so dejected, and at her own white bindings, some of which were turning a worrying pink from even moving around this much.</p><p>…<em>oh.</em></p><p>The teenage girl bites her lip as a surge of guilt and confusion threatens to overtake her. She had made her parents worry again. She closes her eyes and takes a deep, shaky breath.  “I didn’t do this,” Marinette argues weakly.</p><p>
  <em>But who else could have? It must have been me.</em>
</p><p>“Marinette, is everything okay at school?” Sabine pushes. “Did something happen with Alya?"</p><p>
  <em>Who is Alya? I don’t recognize the name…</em>
</p><p>“No, I’m fine,” she whispers, trying to calm them down. She’ll deal with this ‘Alya’ thing later. Right now, Marinette doesn’t want anyone worrying over her, doesn’t want them to waste the energy, especially her parents. She doesn’t deserve it after all their work in putting up with her.</p><p>“Was it Chloe? Lila? I’m going to have a <em>word </em>with Principle Damocles about his school’s bullying policies,” her father growls. “Bad enough that we had this hap—” Marinette tunes him out listlessly.</p><p>
  <em>Chloe? Lila? Who are they? </em>
</p><p>That’s another thought, but ultimately, it didn’t <em>feel</em> right. She shakes her head to answer negatively like she did for Alya.</p><p>“…sweetie, did Adrien say or do something?”</p><p>Sabine Dupain-Cheng says that name like it was something heavier, like it was supposed to mean something more to her daughter than the previous names. All Marinette feels though is confusion, and a sort of block of emptiness—like she <em>should </em>know, according to the expectant looks on her parents’ faces, but she just <em>didn’t.</em> <em>Adrien? Who was that?</em> Another wave of uselessness washes over her, and she crumples her face against her knees.</p><p><em>Alya, Choe, Lila, Adrien. My body. What happened? I blacked out. I don’t know.</em> <em>I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.</em></p><p>“I’m going to kill that boy,” her father swears, leaving the room in a rage. “Tom!” her mother cries out, leaving Marinette behind to chase after him.</p><p>-x-</p><p>Once her parents were gone, Marinette fights through the pain to sit up and examine her bedroom. It was… very pink. Nearly every piece of furniture was some shade of pink, the only breaks in the rosy hues being her desk area, the colorful collection of masked ragdolls on a shelf, and numerous posters of the same blonde-haired, green-eyed boy. There must be at least thirty pictures of him on her walls alone—a quick inspection of her desk revealed a stack of fashion magazines with him on the front cover.</p><p>He had perfectly styled golden locks, each strand gently framing a perfectly shaped face. His eyes were a soft, yet eager jade color, half-lidded and promising adoration. He stared out with all the boyish shyness of a teenager confessing his first crush. This was Adrien Agreste—charming, gorgeous, and everything a girl like her could want.</p><p>Marinette feels nothing.</p><p><em>Am I supposed to know you? </em>she wonders. <em>They say I loved you, but… I just don’t remember.</em></p><p>There is nothing for Marinette in these images of a carefully constructed fantasy designed to entice and entrap. In fact, the more she stares at Adrien’s photographs, the more the girl is uncomfortable with having them up. It doesn’t feel right.</p><p>One by one, she carefully takes down the posters.</p><p>-x-</p><p>It feels like stepping into an alternate universe. She is Marinette, but also not. There are group pictures on her desk she does not remember taking and with people she does not remember meeting. There is no recollection of her making the colorful ragdolls on her bed. Half of her high school career is a blank.</p><p>That night, Marinette spent hours scrolling through her phone, secretly trying to fill the gaps in her memory. There was no way anyone could find out about this strange case of amnesia. She didn’t want to worry her parents or anyone else, after all. What she found out:</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Alya was her best friend. She was supportive, witty, vivacious, confident, and cared for her deeply. Their text messages warmed Marinette’s heart. The silly pictures Marinette had no memory of taking made her heavy frown lift just a little. Lost memory or not, Marinette knew she could care for this girl again.</p>
  <p>Chloe was… something else. The blonde was neither a friend nor an enemy, though several scathing text messages from Alya indicated that Chloe had been rather nasty to her in the past. The actual string of conversations between Marinette and the blonde were short and curt, bordering on hostility at some points, but the most recent texts carried an undercurrent of grudging respect. There were very few pictures of them together, and always it was in a group.</p>
  <p>Lila was a blocked contact. No pictures. Marinette blinked before moving on.</p>
  <p>Adrien was an empty contact, but unlike Lila’s case, her gallery was filled to the brim with pictures of him. If she thought her room was bad, at least 60% of her photo space was of the blonde model.  That same uncomfortable feeling from the posters settled in her stomach. Words like <em>stalker</em> and <em>creep</em> floated around in her mind before Marinette hurriedly deleted all of them.</p>
  <p>She was on relatively good terms with everyone else in her class—none of which she could remember. She wasn’t particularly close with any of them other than Alya.</p>
  <p>Superheroes existed. The two most popular were Ladybug—who Alya apparently idolized—and Chat Noir—whose goofy, grinning likeness Marinette had taking up about 30% of her phone’s space. There were others, but Marinette’s head was starting to hurt trying to memorize all of this information she was supposed to know.</p>
</blockquote><p>Feeling that crushing, aching, useless feeling again, she reaches out and grabs one of the little dolls. It’s the Chat Noir one, all black with a blonde mop for hair. Its green eyes seemed to sparkle at her. Marinette hugs it close as she thinks.</p><p>If superheroes existed, maybe her amnesia and wounds could be the result of a supervillain! Maybe a mind-erasing one… though Marinette didn’t know why any villain would want to go after her… she resolved to ask Alya about setting up a meeting with the Ladybug heroine regardless. According to her research, Ladybug had an ability that was able to reverse a supervillain’s—“akuma” still sounded so foreign to her—damage.</p><p>Ladybug could fix this.</p><p>-x-</p><p>At school, it’s pathetically easy to fool everyone into thinking that nothing has changed.</p><p>Of course, her self-impersonation isn’t perfect.</p><p>She calls Nino “Max” and vice versa, much to her horror and Lila’s snickering. She is a little too friendly to Sabrina before she remembers that her last text with the girl was <em>months</em> ago for a group project that they didn’t even finish. Conversations were hard in general, especially when things like last week’s race between Alix and Kim were completely absent from her memory and she pretends that yes, she did make the banner for that race, and yes, she’ll make another just like it for the next one. She is asked a couple of times if she was all right because she seems quieter and more withdrawn today.</p><p>Luckily, there’s another oddity in the class today that everyone seems to believe is a solid pass for Marinette’s strange behavior—Adrien Agreste is missing completely.</p><p>“Girl, it’ll be all right,” Alya reassures her, resting a firm hand on Marinette’s shoulder. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time Marinette’s been off kilter because of the blonde boy. “Adrien’s grades are perfect and he’s been doing all of his photoshoots. He’ll be back at school before you know it, so just hang tight.”</p><p>Marinette smiles weakly. <em>Right. Adrien. That was it.</em></p><p>“Thanks, Alya. Um, actually I was wondering if you could do me a favor?” The sooner Ladybug could fix this mess, the better.</p><p>“Sure. Anything, Marinette.”</p><p>“I need to speak to Ladybug.”</p><p>-x-</p><p>A few days later, the news comes out. Ladybug was dead. Her surviving partner delivers the news lifelessly before leaving the reporters in an uproar.</p><p>Marinette is in the living room with her parents. When it sinks in, Sabine falls into Tom’s embrace. Marinette watches with dry eyes as her parents softly cry at how tragic it was to have lost such a bright young woman and how awful it was for Adrien to be without a mother and a father.</p><p>Marinette thinks that it is equally tragic to be Chat Noir.</p><p>She’s learned over the past few days that he and Ladybug were more than a superhero duo. Maybe they weren’t necessarily a couple, but you could see it in the superhero’s eyes that Ladybug was his whole world. He lived and breathed for her, and if she had asked for the moon, he would have found a way to reach and grab it. Now she is gone. Seeing that lackluster quality to his eyes, Marinette thinks that perhaps she is not alone.</p><p>-x-</p><p>…her room feels uncomfortably quiet.</p><p>Marinette lies on her bed staring up at her bare ceiling. She’s completed her homework, texted Nathaniel about his portion of the group design project in art, studied for all her finals weeks in advance, and submitted the latest student council proposal to Mr. Damocles. Her sketchbook doesn’t call to her today, and anyways, it’s not like she can focus with all the chaos going on outside. She’s done practically everything she could today and still she feels like she’s missing <em>something</em>.</p><p>Did she always have this much free time for herself? The silence was deafening.</p><p>Suddenly, she sits up. <em>Oh, I know! Maybe some of the girls want to watch a movie over video chat!</em> she thinks, perking up at the thought of not being left alone for too long. It was dangerous outside, but that didn’t mean they had to be completely socially restricted. Marinette dials her friends’ numbers and waits patiently with a hum.</p><p>None of them pick up. All of her calls go straight to voicemail:</p><p>
  <em>“Hey, this is Alya, leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“…leka’s phone… sorry I missed you… leave a message…”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hi! This is Rose’s phone! Please tell me what your heart desires and have a fantabulous day!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Yo, it’s Alix. Can’t answer the phone—will when I got the time, yeah?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hello, you’ve reached Mylène. Sorry I couldn’t make it…”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“This is Kagami. Leave a message.”</em>
</p><p>Marinette stares at her phone for the longest time. Whatever it was that was keeping the other girls busy, it was clear she was not invited—which was fine. It’s… it’s fine. Really. If they didn’t want her hanging around and taking up space, she understood that, could really see it from their point of view. She’s okay being by herself. Quietly, Marinette turns off her cell phone, brings the blankets up and around herself, and curls under the covers.</p><p>Outside her window, Team Miraculous earns yet another hard-won victory against Paonne.</p><p>-x-</p><p>It’s almost funny how long Marinette didn’t notice the single plastic rose on her desk. Then one dark day, the clear glass vase holding it is shattered and she feels the soft red fabric of the petals and the waxiness of the leaves. Marinette has no idea where it came from, who put it there, or how long she’s had it. As with all things that fit those three descriptions, she can only assume it’s from Adrien and her heart twinges a little.</p><p>
  <em>Why would he give her a plastic rose? Why not a real one? Was she not enough for that?</em>
</p><p>She cleans up the red and the water and the shards before her parents can see.</p><p>After a few moments of deliberation, the flower is tucked into the back of a desk drawer along with the posters and magazines she never brought herself to throw away.</p><p>-x-</p><p>His name is Luka Couffaine. He is Juleka’s older brother. Their first meeting was eight years ago when Marinette was a first year in high school. Marinette remembers seeing him for the first time two years ago at a small concert he opened for. He wasn’t a singer, but a guitarist, and  the way he played with so much emotion and looked at her like she was the only girl in the room drew her in.</p><p>He makes her feel a little less cold.</p><p>“Luka, it’s so good to see you!” Marinette greets happily. The chilly winter air makes her breath come out in little puffs of smoke.</p><p>The navy-haired woman takes a few moments to calm her thudding heart and aching chest. She then offers the musician the breakfast croissant that’s been practically burning her fingers through the bandages. Luka Couffaine takes it with a gentle smile and gazes at her expectantly.</p><p>“Good morning, Marinette. That’s an… interesting outfit. Worked too late again?” he asks, giving a look at her attire—a midnight black coat and beret, a moss green scarf, numerous bandages covering her fingers. Lukas’s always said she looked good in red, but black and green made her feel safe. Today she needed to feel a little safer. She should have known Luka would have picked up on her moods just by her clothes.</p><p>Marinette blinks. After a moment, she averts her eyes, hides her hands behind her back, and gives him a sheepish smile. “Er yeah, you know me. Can’t keep track of time when I really get into a new design,” she replies nervously, and he nods thoughtfully at her, but doesn’t add anything to the conversation.</p><p>They don’t talk about the heavy things.</p><p>
  <em>Does he want something from me? Come on, Marinette, think!</em>
</p><p>Sometimes, it was a little hard for her to read the soft-spoken man.</p><p>She clears her throat. After a pause--“But enough about me. We have to talk about you!” she says, pointedly latching onto his arm and starting to walk. Luka brightens considerably at that. “What’s this about a deal with Jagged Records, hm?”</p><p><em>That</em> sets Luka off. Marinette smiles a little easier as Luka begins to speak about his music and ambitions.</p><p>She plays the part of an attentive, caring girlfriend, though her mind is a thousand miles away. She still feels a bit hollow inside, but Luka is a soft melody echoing around in that emptiness and making it feel fuller. Background noise to compensate for the space. Laughing at his muted brand of happiness, chatting with him about their mutual friends’ antics, and holding onto his arm as they walk down the busy Parisian streets… Marinette feels like this—<em>she—</em>might be enough.</p><p>She thinks that she might love him.</p><p>-x-</p><p>But weeks later, on live television, Chat Noir tears the amok’s limbs from their sockets, scratches at its face until it’s a bloody, unrecognizable mess, rips the torso into two—</p><p>And she watches every single bit of it and pretends it is her.</p><p>Something is <em>wrong</em> with her, and she doesn’t—can’t let—no one can <em>know</em>. Not her parents, not Chloe or Lila, not Alya, no one could know that dark thoughts circle her mind like a storm. Insecurities wrap their hands around her neck. Self-loathing saps her world of color.</p><p><em>Clumsy, impulsive, useless, forgetful, tongue-tied, nervous, pushover, self-obsessed Marinette.</em> </p><p>She never feels enough. She never feels deserving. Seeing the bloodied hero on the screen like that, so raw and flayed open, she understands. Paris will call him a monster with even louder voices, but not her.</p><p>Marinette thinks that’s why she listens a little more closely to the news when Chat Noir’s name comes up, why she occasionally glances up at the sky for a glimpse of the man in a black suit. She’s never had a conversation with him that she can remember, never spoken with him <em>after</em> Hawkmoth’s defeat and Ladybug’s death, but she sees him <em>before </em>and <em>after </em>and thinks he’s the same kind of broken that she is.</p><p>They both put up an illusion, pretending to be whole when they’re anything but.</p><p>-x-</p><p>Life goes on. One day at a time, no matter how hard or easy, Marinette continues.</p><p>She designs for a boutique that pays her but throttles her creative drive with their catering fashion. She tries to enjoy the company of her friends that become increasingly busier and fuller of excuses to miss their meetups. She entertains notions of love with a man who makes her heart <em>beat</em>, but not <em>pound.</em></p><p>The hard days are <em>hard.</em></p><p>Those days, she lies in bed with her phone shut off and the doors locked, knowing where she is but unable to feel anything but pain, and confusion, and that <em>itch.</em> The pain almost unbearable then, all of her insecurities and insecurities stepping down on her chest and forcing the air out of her lungs. No amount of lines could leech the poison lurking underneath her skin. She doesn’t want to die, but she doesn’t want—<em>this can’t be life</em>, and she’s confused because <em>why</em> does she feel like this when she should be happy?</p><p>The easy days are… better.</p><p>She works and laughs and smiles and lives. These days are usually spent with Luka, Alya, or another friend. Never alone. These wonderful people distract her with their own humanity, making her believe that maybe she can be like them all the time without feeling like something is missing.</p><p>She’s felt <em>more </em>at some point, she thinks. <em>Was </em>more. Maybe. But it doesn’t matter.</p><p>Marinette will continue the façade of being Marinette until she <em>is</em>.</p><p>Because she’s Marinette. Just a normal girl, with a normal life.</p><p>…</p><p>Who else would she be?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A special thanks to my beta readers Khanofallorcs and wellsaltedlady. Your comments helped me reshape this story, for better or worse, and I learned a bunch of new grammar rules. Thanks for reading.</p><p>With any luck, I can muster up the courage to write a multi-chapter fic set in this universe. I've already got a basic plot written out, but this feels like one of those stories that would demand so much emotional energy... I really want to write it though. Hopefully, maybe, perhaps soon.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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